A Peoples War - The Blitz

nopsis of Talk given by Tony Adfield at Steyning Grammar School on Friday 8th November 2002 on ’Henfield Railway Station during the War’. I moved into the Station House, Henfield, during 1935 at the tender age of five. My father was Porter-Signalman at Henfield Station. Porter-Signalman was a railway grade of which I always thought was badly named. The job description, if such a thing had been available at that time, would have shown that the job was far more skilful than the name would seem to indicate. The job required ticket office experience, dealing with both goods and parcels traffic, manning the signal box and being the general ’dog's body’ around the Station when manned by just one person. I can recall Friday 1st September 1939. I was on holiday at my Grandmother's home in Southwick. The international situation had deteriorated, Germany had invaded Poland and my mother decided that I should be brought home as war was imminent. So it was on the evening of Friday 1st September 1939 that I travelled with my mother on the train from Southwick to Henfield. A "Blackout", as a national air raid precaution, had just been decreed by the Government and joining the Brighton to Horsham train on that evening was my first experience of the "Blackout". As far as I can remember, the train consisted of a steam tank engine and a two coach pull and push set. All of the lights on the train had been painted blue, giving just enough light to see but not enough to read by. Come Sunday 3rd September 1939, we listened, at Station House, Henfield, to the now famous broadcast by Neville Chamberlain at eleven o'clock in the morning, which announced that Great Britain was at war with Germany. Immediately after the broadcast, the air raid siren sounded and tens of people rushed up to the road bridge over the railway in front of the Station Hotel (later to become the Cat & Canary and is now called the Old Railway Tavern) half expecting to see hoards of German bombers coming over from the east. The bridge has now been filled-in but one can still stand on the road where the bridge was and appreciate the vantage panoramic view to the north, west and south. Little did we realise at the time that within the next twelve months we would be standing on that same bridge witnessing the "real war" in the form of the Battle of Britain being fought in the skies over Southern England. The excitement of the declaration of war and the sounding of the air raid siren was just too much for one Air Raid Warden, he ran up and down the road outside of Henfield Railway Station in his pyjamas with his gasmask and steel helmet on, blowing his whistle and yelling at people to get indoors. History records that it was a false alarm and the "all clear" was sounded at midday about five past twelve. Then came the period of about eight to nine months of the "phoney war" when life carried on as normal at Henfield Station. People were being called up to the Forces but my father was considered to be in a "Reserve Occupation", which meant that being a signalman he was considered to be essential to the war effort and, therefore, was exempt from conscription to the Forces. In any event, dad was getting towards his fortieth birthday and I do not think that conscription had reached that age group at that time. However, he was enlisted into the Local Defence Volunteers, later to be renamed the Home Guard, and also had to carry out A.R.P. Fire Watching activities. The normality was to end with the German invasion of the Netherlands and Belgium and the subsequent collapse of France, with the Battle of Britain starting in May 1940. Completely ignoring their thoughts of safety, people would stand on the previous mentioned road bridge over the railway line and watch the aerial dogfights with all the vapour trails criss-crossing the sky and the planes falling out of the sky and crashing as they were shot down. It is interesting to note that, human nature being as it is, any plane that was shot down must be a German, that was not always so and this was perfectly illustrated in the October of 1940. At the time there were two young teenage booking clerks working in the ticket office at Henfield Railway Station. Because of the invasion

Movie Genres: Biography, Foreign, War

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